Chicago, 1956 An elderly tailor Leonard Beurling (Mark Rylance), an Englishman, came to Chicago from London and opened a tailoring shop for high-quality men’s suits. The area where the studio is located is controlled by the boss of the Irish mafia group Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale). It was Roy who helped Leonard open the atelier, and in return, the tailor placed a hiding place in the atelier for dirty money received by Roy’s henchmen from racketeering. In addition, Roy and his confidants are the main customers of Beurling, because who else in these years could afford custom-made suits made of expensive fabric?
Two of Roy’s closest assistants usually come to collect money from the atelier’s cache – his son Richie (Dylan O’Brien) and a certain Francis (Johnny Flynn). Francis is not a member of the Boyle family, but he once blocked Roy with his body during a shootout, so the mafia boss now has unlimited trust in him. Richie tries to pretend that he is giving orders to Francis, but he does not put a penny on him and obeys only Roy.
Beurling has an assistant – a young girl named Mabel (Zoey Deutch). She grew up in this area, hates this area and dreams of leaving Chicago somewhere far away, to some European country: to Madrid, Barcelona, and even better – to Paris. Mabel is very independent and is not going to stick around in this atelier all her life. And Mabel is having an affair with Richie, though Leonard disapproves of it.
At the moment, Boyle’s gang is involved in a war with the rival Lafontaine gang. And one day, Francis and Richie showed up at Burling’s atelier at night: they got into a shootout with the Lafontaine gang, Richie was wounded in the stomach, and Francis tells Burling that they will sit out here while the street is full of policemen.
From this moment on, events for all participants will begin to develop rapidly.
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The directorial debut of Graham Moore, an Oscar-winning screenwriter for The Imitation Game, about English mathematician Alan Turing trying to crack the German Enigma cipher machine during World War II.
The script for his directorial debut, Graham Moore wrote himself – in collaboration with Jonathan McClain. The original name of The Outfit is a suit, equipment, equipment, but also an organization, a company, and this is the name of the Chicago crime syndicate created by Al Capone and Johnny Torrio.
“Suit” – the film is very intimate and atmospheric. It starts slowly, while the camera carefully and slowly shows the surroundings of the studio of the mid-fifties of the last century, and it all looks very authentic.
When viewers are shown that some dark personalities in excellent suits come into the studio every now and then, who, without greeting anyone, put envelopes in a special safe box locked with a lock, we understand that peace and serenity of this institution clearly do not shine.
Well, from the moment when Francis tumbles into the studio in the middle of the night with Richie bleeding, the dynamics of what is happening accelerates sharply and an exciting crime thriller begins, replete with sharp plot twists. Such unexpected twists and turns that while watching you feel like riding a rollercoaster.
At the same time, mind you, this is actually a performance, because almost all the action takes place in three rooms of this studio. And the ever-increasing tension between the participants in the events is reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, where almost all the main action took place in the warehouse.
British actor Mark Rylance, I noticed for his role as a lawyer in a good film by Eron Sorkin “Trial of the Chicago Seven”. Mark also had a great role in the recent acclaimed film Don’t Look Up, where he played the owner of a powerful IT company. The roles were noticeable, but still episodic. And here he has a major role.
And Rylance played it just brilliantly! It seems to be such a quiet, unremarkable tired man, clearly afraid to deal with all this bandit, but it is clear that an inconspicuous tailor is very difficult, and who knows what he thinks about everything that happens. And when Berling finds himself in a deadly situation, in which a variety of people may want to shoot him at any moment, he seems to be in complete despair, but does not give up, but finds options to somehow solve the problem.
This is a strong and varied role. Rylands generally suits to play characters from the series “there are still devils in the still waters”, and he knows how to show character, will and power and a person in whom initially such a thing does not seem to be observed.
And – no, there will not be the expected nonsense from the series “the tailor turned out to be a former fur seal, and he killed all the mafiosi with his bare hands”, here everything is much more interesting and more reliable.
The second most important role here is played by Johnny Flynn, who played Francis. Just recently I saw Johnny Flynn in a good movie called “Emma.” – a comedy costume melodrama based on the novel by Jane Austen (yes, it seems that it’s not my genre at all, but the movie turned out to be excellent in the meantime), where he played Mr. Knightley, a charming young aristocrat. But here it’s a completely different type. Francis is a real bandit and murderer. He, thanks to Roy Boyle, came out of the bottom, he is very ambitious, ruthless and fearless. And he expects to become the head of the gang after Roy, because Boyle’s son Richie is not suitable for this role.
Very well played, Flynn really impressed! By the way, the scar on his face, giving Flynn a somewhat sinister look, is not at all the skill of make-up artists: the scar is real, received by Johnny in childhood, when he was seriously bitten by a Staffordshire terrier.
Zoey Deutch also liked the role of Mabel. Beurling’s assistant is a girl with character who plays her own game. Before that, I saw Zoe in the role of a crazy blonde in the not-so-successful continuation of Zombieland: she was good there, and here she didn’t disappoint at all, the character is interesting and charismatic.
Well, Simon Russell Beale is good as the head of Roy’s gang. There is a very tense scene with him in the atelier when Roy comes looking for his son. Roy tells the tailor why he has to kill people and that these people are like leftover fabric and all sorts of scraps from tailoring that the tailor has to throw away. At the same time, it is clearly visible that for this fat man, who looks really very threatening, people are garbage.
All in all, it was a good movie. A clever script with sharp plot twists, a great recreated atmosphere of those times, an impressive main character, perfectly played by Mark Rylance, worthy secondary roles. I highly recommend watching it, I really enjoyed it.
PS I listened to the Russian voiceover (amateur two-voiced). In my opinion, quite worthy. They didn’t mess up with the translation, but in general the dialogues there are quite simple. In terms of intonation, in general, they also got pretty good. So you will not spoil the impression when viewing in dubbing.
https://youtu.be/FA6APYQF-jE
The Outfit
Director: Graham Moore Cast: Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O’Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Simon Russell Beal, Jonathan McClain, Alan Mehdizadeh, Chiedu Agbor, Scoop Wasserstein
Worldwide gross: $4 million
Crime thriller, UK-USA, 2021, 105 min.